I recently attended the commencement ceremonies at Queens College in New York City, one of the nation’s finest public institutions.
At the ceremony specifically for graduates of the education program, the dean opened his remarks by citing an African proverb, “How fare the children?”
The answer should be “The children are well.”
In a good and decent society, we take care of the children, because in doing so, we not only express our humanity, but we ensure our future.
In this society, it might be well to ask, “How fare the 1%?”
The 1% fare exceedingly well. Their share of the national income rises each year.
And none fare so well as the Pritzker family of Chicago.
Penny Pritzker was a member of the Chicago Board of Education.
She voted to close 50 Chicago public schools while increasing the growth of charter schools, one of which bears her name.
Soon she will be President Obama’s Secretary of Commerce.
Her brother fares well too.
How fare the children?
Not so well.
Nearly one of every four children in the United States lives in poverty.
Many go to bad hungry; growing numbers are homeless.
Many are in schools without art or music, without guidance counselors or librarians.
Many are in classes so large that they get no individual attention.
Whose fault is this?
It must be their teachers.
They must be graded, ranked, evaluated closely.
Makes no sense, but the mainstream media has swallowed it whole.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
As much as it pains me to speak on behalf of Penny Pritzker, she had already resigned from the Board in anticipation of becoming the Secretary of Commerce before the school closing vote.
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Good correction
Wonder how she would have voted
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Penny had voted earlier, prior to leaving, to close public schools. That particular vote was not acted upon at that time. Her school closing approval voting record stands even though she divested herself of her position prior to the last vote which was acted upon.
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Joe Biden’s brother, Frank, also fares quite well, suckling at the Florida government teat as president of a group of charter schools.
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For those of us paying attention to current events and trends, it almost goes without saying anymore that the elite are doing better and better and the rest of us are doing worse and worse.
Our anomalous period of wealth following WW II is rapidly drawing to a close. The decisions we allowed the elite to make for our society in the 1970s and 80s are coming to fruition. Instead of using the unprecedented wealth of the post WW II era to lock in a strong social fabric that would result in sustained, but moderate prosperity for all, we chose laws that would result in the neo-feudal social structure we will have in this country for the foreseeable future.
Get used to serfdom and teach your children how to survive, because like it or not, that’s their future if you are part of what used to be the middle class.
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Frank Biden’s charter chain in Florida operates for profit
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How fare the zombies who follow the leaders? How fare the leaders who follow the politicians? How fare the politicians who follow the money? And how fare the money that feeds on the zombies?
I regret the actions of those who make public welfare decisions based on corporate hotel chain models. Schools are not department stores or shopping malls; they are boutiques for a democracy crying out for personalization not industrialization. My 42 years in public and independent school leadership has taught me that those who toil in this profession for the good of the order are heard rarely in public policy.
How fare the teachers? Depressed, demoralized and still decidedly dedicated to democratic directions, we remain with clear conscience committed to our children!
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“How fare the zombies who follow the leaders?”
And who are these “zombies”? The teachers and administrators who have gone along to get along? The teachers and administrators who have complied with implementing class room mandates, such as CCSS and standardized testing that they know are hindering the teaching and learning process thereby harming the most innocent among us, the children?
Please, pray tell, let us know of whom you speak.
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“But above all else, my bitterness about my formative educational experience arises from an ever-sharpening memory of my teachers’ watchfulness, and their concomitant, fundamental dishonesty. The adults saw everything. We saw that they saw. And we saw that, in spite of all the humanistic rhetoric they daily hung on us, they never really spoke. We saw, though we lacked the vocabulary or class consciousness to articulate it, that if our teachers wanted to keep their jobs, they had to avoid the eminently punishable good deed of identifying the futility of their task: using progressive education as a do-as-I-say enjoinder against the pervasive competitiveness and atomization that defined the society we were preparing to join, even in its liberal reaches. In this manner, moral complacency was role modeled for us, as it was for so many children in so many milieus – educational and otherwise – across the country.”
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Interesting quote. Is it yours? If not, citation please! Thanks.
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Duane: http://duboisforum.org/home/aggregator/sources/3
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Madison observed “All Governments rest on opinion.”
Albert Camus observed “What better way to enslave a man than to give him a VOTE and tell him he is FREE.”
As mentioned before on this site : Public education serves as the foundational cornerstone of democracy. As well as : Public education
creates and maintains a culture.
A GOV. of, for and by the people sounds nice. Equal under the eyes of the law sounds nice. An ELECTED representative gov. sounds nice.
Democracy sounds nice.
BUT Actions DO speak louder than words.
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What’s happening is that feudalistic cronyism is being dressed up a NewSpeak version of the language classical liberalism.
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Please! Prepositions are essential for linking phrases, clarifying your statement. Besides, most of these people are professional educators, who appreciate proper syntax.
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What is happening [in the privatization movement] is that [feudal-style] cronyism is being dressed up in a NewSpeak version of the language of classical liberalism.
Michael, I will resist the temptation to rip apart the syntax and punctuation of your response, though it would be moderately amusing to have at it. The missing preposition was a typo, nothing more. I do wish that WordPress allowed one to edit one’s posts, but it doesn’t.
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So much for classical liberalism…
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I agree, Michael. Ideologies are easily appropriated, and that reality should give us pause. We should always check ourselves when resorting to them automatically. These -isms are theologies, and as Wallace Stevens said, “Theology after breakfast sticks to the eye.”
And I regret the snideness of my previous post. I, too, have an instinctive aversion to elliptical blogspeak.
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Mrslewischem: Please, do not feel obliged to defend Penny Pritzker for leaving the board in anticipation of her appointment to the post of secretary of commerce. Pritzker has a great slew of dirty involvements foaming in the wake of her trail along the way to her freshly purchased post.
This should define with crystal clarity who Obama is and who and what he represents.
Read about it here:
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/penny_pritzker_barack_obamas_fairy_godmother_20130504/
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/05/19/1210299/-Penny-Pritzker-as-an-example-of-the-criminality-of-our-elites#
http://news.firedoglake.com/2013/05/02/obama-nominating-major-campaign-contributor-penny-pritzker-to-commerce-secretary/
Let’s not forget the $35 million home Pritzker is contributing to and raising money for the Obamas in Hawaii. This residence is for the end of this term, when Obama has stepped down from wiping the floor with the middle class.
There is lots more information on google!
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” . . wiping the floor with the middle class . . . ”
So poetic, so well put, Madame La Farge.
How goes your knitting?
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People who have never really worked in their life nor had to worry about surviving and paying bills are being allowed to run over everyone. Pretty sad that the White House keeps running over educators and spitting in their faces.
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No discussion about Ms. Pritzker would be complete without a viewing of a video of public school parent activist Matt Farmer (an unpaid, volunteer activist by the way)—calling the billionaire Pritzker out on her hypocrisy of cutting out all music, art, libraries, P.E., critical thinking, etc. … from public schools, while spearheading a multi-million-dollar campaign to provide those same things for her own kids’ private school.
Pritzker says public school kids “are only entitled” the bare minimum training for low-level jobs.. and that’s it. Watch trial lawyer Farmer cross-examine Pritzker in absentia.
Come on Matt!!!
Bring the Fire!!!
This was at a rally leading up the Chicago Teachers’ Union successful strike last fall.
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Leonard Eisenberg, an LAUSD teacher fighting an unjust termination weighs in on the same issue on his blog:
“Take a step back and look at how the rich educate their own children, while asking the simple question: If the arts are so unnecessary, then why are they so much an essential part of their children’s academic formation? When you line up how they want public education to educate in juxtaposition to how the rich educate their children, you immediately see that critical analysis by a person capable or formulating their own world view is a non-negotiable essential for how the rich educate themselves.
“In seeking an answer to reconcile these fundamentally different views as to what is acceptable for the education of the 1% and the 99%- the critical thinking answer that seems to explain this apparent contradiction- is that public education as defined by the 1% has an agenda to privatize public education for their own financial profit, while dumbing down and creating a docile, subservient, and obedient 99% that no longer has the ability to question their authority.”
You can link to this:
http://www.perdaily.com/2013/06/lenny-do-you-think-that.html
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Penny Pritzker is a sniveling, greedy, hypocritical, well heeled, high heeled call girl whose biggest john is Barack Obama. Or perhaps he is her trophy gigolo.
This is no feminist issue. She is not an insult to women; she’s a danger to society. Her tactics and politicking amount to none other than financial terrorism.
Wake up America!
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Wake up to the “Brave New World” Aldous Huxley 1932
“Within the next generation, the rulers will discover that infant conditioning and
narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons.
And the lust for power can be satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude.”
Wake up to “With NO Apologies” Barry Goldwater 1964
“The powers of financial capitalism had another far reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements, arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the worlds’ central banks which were themselves private corporations. The growth of financial capitalism made possible a centralization of world economic control and use of this power for the direct benefit of financiers and the indirect injury of all other economic groups.”
Wake up to GHW Bush
“In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. National sovereignty wasn’t such a great idea after all.”
Wake up to “The fine art of BALONEY DETECTION” Carl Sagan
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge — even to ourselves — that we’ve been so credulous or gullible: too easily convinced that something is true. (So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the new bamboozles rise.)”
” Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and bamboozle requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication and courage. But if we don’t practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly serious problems that face us — and we risk becoming a nation, or city, of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along.”
Converting the labor of the masses into the wealth of the few is nothing new.
Pitching the belief that Wealthiness is next to Godliness, that personal narcissism
is a “Social Good”, eliminates avarice or “Where does success end, and greed begin?”
When the proliferation of material things is the measure of progress in living, when wealth occupies a higher position than wisdom, when notoriety is admired more than dignity, when success is more important than self-respect, it’s time for HONESTY!
Has it been for the children? Has it been for the Government? What enables or
continues this narcissistic culture.?
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Psycho-babble.
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Thirsty elephant alert in aisle Rand. Carry on…
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No Brick,
Some beautiful points by others that you cited. Thank you.
But realize that history has cycles, and that if we don’t see the changes we are righting for in our lifetime, we will have sowed the seeds for our descendents to continue to cultivate and reap through our present activism.
This blog is one such example.
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